Blogs

On May 16, 2017, the French, Belgian and Dutch members of the Data Protection Contact Group published the results of their investigations after WhatsApp issued its new privacy policy in August 2015, after joining Facebook. See here. The DPAs all over the world watched the changes closely and several EU authorities initiated national investigations to verify, […]

  On May 11, 2017, the Italian Antitrust Authority (Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato “ICA”) found that WhatsApp infringed the Italian Consumer Code. In particular, according to the ICA, WhatsApp forced the users of its service “to accept in full the new Terms of Use, and specifically the provision to share their personal data with Facebook, […]

  On March 21, 2017, Attorney General Schneiderman announced that his office received a record number of data breach notices in 2016. Around 1,300 data breaches were reported in 2016. This represented a 60% increase over the previous year; these breaches exposed the personal records of 1.6 million New Yorkers in 2016. Hacking represented the […]

On February 15, 2017, the Corte di Cassazione, the Italian Supreme Court, refused to hold that every criminal defendant has a right to have his or her personal data deleted from a published decision. The court must evaluate each case to determine if it is appropriate to omit certain personal data. The Supreme Court clarified the terms under which […]

On April 4, 2017, the Working Party 29 (WP29) released Opinion 1/2017 on the Proposed Regulation for the ePrivacy Regulation (2002/58/EC) – wp247 (ePrivacy Regulation Proposal). The WP29 welcomes the Proposal for the Regulation. However, it expressed several points of concern and suggested amendments. The European Commission, along with the European Parliament and the European […]

When a US organization decides to self-certify under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, compliance with Privacy Shield principles becomes compulsory. This may be a problem for many US organizations because certain processing activities that they perform – which are perfectly lawful under American law — are unlawful under a Privacy Shield’s perspective. Why? And what to do? Let’s step […]

  On March 1, 2017, the new Cybersecurity Regulation to Protect Consumers and Financial Institutions proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo took effect . This first-in-the-nation piece of legislation aims at protecting consumer data and financial systems from cyber-attacks of terrorist organizations and other criminal enterprises. The Regulation requires banks, insurance companies, and other financial services institutions […]

On March 1, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a Stay Petition in part, and ordered a “stay on an interim basis” of certain aspects of the 2016 order “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services” (the “Privacy Order”). The Privacy Order containing broadband privacy rules was published on November 2016. […]

You might have noticed that browsers have recently started to place symbols (colored padlocks) to grade the level of safety of the websites. Look at the web address: on the left, you will find symbols indicating the safety status. There are three types of symbols. Small green padlocks stand for secured websites, information or grey […]

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) developed Privacy Assistant, an app that uses machine learning to help users control the information that can be collected and used by mobile apps they install on their Android smartphones. It asks users a number of questions before recommending some possible changes to the permission settings. Privacy Assistant is available here. Follow […]